Vaal River, South Africa, 1869

The artist was a Scottish settler in Natal who travelled extensively in southern Africa from 1860, and published Twenty-five Years in a Waggon in the Gold Regions of Africa in two volumes in 1887.

For a similar view of the Vaal River below Klipdrift by Anderson, dated 1873, see R.F. Kennedy, Catalogue of Pictures in the Africana Museum, Johannesburg, 1970, I, A54. The first diamond diggings on the Vaal River began at this site in 1869.